Student Blog: Nervous for My 1st Auditions and Callback

Just a week ago, I went to my first ever musical audition and callback for a school production. We will be doing Into The Woods in a style of a workshop musical. In Singapore, we are still restricted to 5 singers unmasked at a time. Therefore, we will be doing Into The Woods as part of a workshop process without a final showcase, which means it ends right before the production week. The outline of the module is for year 2 and year 3 to collaborate so all of us get to work with other people.

Yes, I know, you might be wondering, what is the point? We haven't been able to put up musicals for more than 2 years and as students, if we were to graduate from a musical theatre course without any experience with working on a book musical at all, it feels incomplete. It's very complicated, but it's the best the school could do for us. So this is a learning opportunity for us to be in a book musical. Luckily for my class, we have 1 more year for the situation to change so that we can perform a book musical live.

Now I will share with you the process of audition and callbacks. It's obvious that the panelists in a school setting are the lecturers. So they know our skillsets and they are aware of our potential of bringing a character to life. With that being said, they tend to have an idea in mind of who to cast for each role. Once it's in their head, it's pretty much very difficult to change that. I think all of us have the desire to be a lead in any production so everyone is fighting for the same roles.

I wanted to audition for the role of Baker. The audition requirement is to bring in a character song, so I sang World's Greatest Dad from Elf The Musical. I honestly thought that the Baker is a very toned-down character so I wanted to showcase a different character which got me to choose World's Greatest Dad because of the narrative. I realized it was a bad choice because it's closer to the character of Jack than the Baker. So a few hours before the audition, I decided to tone down my character to fit the Baker character but I was so lost in my thoughts that I acted half-heartedly because I wasn't clear of my direction. That was totally my mistake.

I didn't get the callback for the Baker role obviously. I got called back to be the Princes (either Cinderella's or Rapunzel's) along with the majority of the boys. We were to prepare Agony for the callback. It was so difficult because we had to learn both the Princes part in less than 48 hours. They tried different variations of pairing and I went up with 2 different scene partners and both times were very different. Reacting to different people was an interesting experience. The 2 scene partners gave very different energy and we had to adapt to each other which I think I did my best.

In the end, I was cast as the Narrator in the show. I had a huge hunch that I will be cast as a Narrator because I've done similar characters in the past. I have to keep a positive attitude because it's not my time to shine because priority is given to the seniors who are graduating. My voice is also not suited for the musical style of the show because I'm a belter and contemporary musicals are my forte. I know I didn't do my best for this audition and I was totally panicking but with this experience, I get to learn a lot. My senior gave me this advice which calmed me down and I hope could help you as well: all of us already got the job. Hopefully, the rehearsal process will run smoothly and next year I will excel better.